Call forwarding is an optional service provided by some telephone service providers which, for a fee, enables a telephone subscriber to arrange for incoming calls to be forwarded to a forwarding number. In a typical scenario, the telephone subscriber will enable the call forwarding service through a keypad on the telephone subscriber's telephone (also known as "customer premise equipment" (CPE)). This enablement will cause the telephone service provider to readdress calls originally destined for the telephone subscriber's telephone to instead be addressed to a telephone specified by the telephone subscriber. For example, if a user of this service is about to leave the user's home to travel to the user's office, the user can engage the service by pressing a predetermined code on a keypad of the user's home telephone. In response to the signal created by this keypad activation, the telephone service provider may prompt the user to enter a forwarding number. Subsequently, the telephone service provider, through a central switch network (also known as "central office"), will cause telephone calls to the user's home telephone number to instead be connected to the user's work telephone number.
Many years ago, a "toll fraud" practice was employed. According to this practice, telephone calls were forwarded through an intermediary location in order to avoid charges for a long distance telephone call by instead having two local telephone calls. Similarly, calls were sometimes forwarded through an intermediate location to make it more difficult for the calls to be traced to the originator.
From the perspective of the user, conventional call forwarding as described above is inefficient and costly. For example, conventional call forwarding can only be initiated or terminated from the user's telephone. Thus, for example, if the user forgets to "set" call forwarding before leaving home, the user's calls will not be forwarded. Further, if the user changes location while away from the user's phone, conventional call forwarding does not allow the user to "reset" the call forwarding feature to forward calls to a different forwarding number. Also, conventional call forwarding does not allow for discrimination between incoming calls to forward individual calls to different destinations based on call related information such as caller ID data. Finally, conventional call forwarding is expensive, requiring the user to pay a monthly and/or per call premium.